It’s been a while now that I gave my SVP talk and posted about it (part 1, part 2, part 3). And that means that the (excellent) Nature News article has seeped down into the abysses of the Internet. The first few posts I found illustrated the “Chinese Whispers” principle quite nicely.
And what does this plastic cutie have to do
with my talk, hu? Read below the fold…….
Today, the Stats page of my blog told me that someone had found her or his way to it via a search for the terms “mallison dinosaur speed”. Out of curiosity I googled them, too. That turned up a bunch of posts, and to my joy they all got the story between roughly and exactly right. Interestingly, there is very little direct copy&paste going on, nobody simply did a Guttenberg on the Nature News article.
Here’s a selection of links. There is not much leeway in how you can portray my hypothesis (“nutty idea” seems a better term), and I was surprised to see how well many people did in re-writing things.
At io9, Rareresource, dailymail.co.uk (golly, the Daily Mail got something RIGHT? WOW! And check out the photo they found online at the Author bio page of my Palaeontologia Electronica “Digital Plateosaurus I” paper! LOL), and at gammasquad. Kinda crazy fun is the image Discover Magazine selected for their take (above).
Ok, that’s all nice and – to be honest – I had a really good laugh at the comments on io9 and, especially, the Daily Mail. But what I enjoyed reading is Mark Wildmann’s short paragraph at Saurian. Mark has a word in there that I consciously avoided: “Froude”. That is a dead giveaway that he understood very well what I was talking about, and really knows his Alexander. Cool! 🙂
If you happen to find a really wildly funny (=probably f-ed up) or really good post on my talk please yell in comments!
🙂
And here’s a non-pink-tracksuited, non-iPodded T. rex for ya. Until a certain dmaas goes and draws one for us…… (don’t you DARE, David!!!).
dinosaurpalaeo 
Squee! AMNH 5027!
When it comes to palaeo, the Daily Mail is getting it (to all intents and purposes) right recently. Which is nothing short of incredible – I included them in my undergrad thesis specifically because they got it hilariously wrong most of the time. It’s probably just fortuitous coincidence, but maybe things really are improving…ah…. *rainbows and unicorns*
“I included them in my undergrad thesis..”
me wanna read! PLEASE!?!?!????
And ten dinosaurpalaeo points to you for recognizing the specimen, and an additional ten for the specimen number 🙂
You don’t really. I wrote some of it while drunk. But I’ll e-mail it to you tomorrow if you like (I’m on the wrong computer right now). It did get a first, which is probably the greatest, most unlikely achievement of my life.
Yes, please! Rdunk wirting otfne isn’t hlaf sa bad as pepole s-s-sink 😉 and more fun!
heinrich.mallison(at)gmail.com, please!
Done and done. I’m a big fan of yours, so of course I’ll send you my slightly embarrassing essays. Tomorrow!
P.S. Of course I’d recognise AMNH 5027 anywhere. It’s my absolute favourite T. rex specimen for no good reason…
How do you DO that? Sigh…
Well, it helps that I recognise the AMNH dinosaur hall and have seen a lot of photos of that mount before…I’m not sure why that particular specimen number sticks in my head though (I struggle to remember most others). I guess because it’s a handsome T. rex!
Thanks for the kind words Heinrich. I thought Alexander’s work was strange at the time anyway since it was slap bang in the middle of the renaissance – fast dinos and all – but it was interesting all the same.
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